Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol (2021) Movie Script
1
In the summer of 2020,
one city in Britain would become
the focus of international
attention after the murder
of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Overnight, Minneapolis on fire.
The situation here in Santa Monica,
California, is very fluid.
A storm of anti-racism protests,
captured in dramatic news reports,
spread across the United States
and the world.
A very serious escalation of
disorder outside Downing Street.
And when this storm
landed in Bristol,
a statue of a slave trader
was torn down.
CHEERING
The world's media
descended on Bristol.
UNTRANSLATED
In another British city,
this is Bristol,
a statue of a 17th-century
slave owner was...
..taken down
and tossed into the water.
CHEERING
Caught in the eye of the storm
was the city's mayor, Marvin Rees,
the first directly elected
black mayor of a city in Europe.
Mr Rees, do you support
the police in their search
for those responsible for
criminal damage,
or do you support
the tearing down of the statue?
Putting out those kind of binary
options really doesn't help us
navigate a complicated world,
Krishnan.
There is something horrific about
having a slave trader's statue
in the middle of your city, and yet
there are people who feel that
they're losing a piece of themselves
with the statue being hauled down,
and all those things
are true at the same time.
Brilliant, as far as I'm concerned.
Every time I've seen it,
I felt sick.
It's just an excuse
for premeditated violence.
It was Bristol coming together
and saying, "You know what?
We're going to support each other."
How many statues
are we going to destroy?
How many buildings do we deface
before we've got history
looking the way we want it?
If you can't live with it,
why do you come and live here?
This film began following the Mayor
and the people of Bristol
in the immediate aftermath of
one of the defining moments of 2020.
I'm hoping that we stay away
from overt street conflict.
If we don't handle the next few days
and weeks well,
then clearly there's going to be
a lot more dry tinder, as it were,
for people to put sparks to.
POLICE SIREN
It's been five days since
the Colston statue was taken down
and the international media's
focus on the mayor's office
is continuing to build.
New York Times, Local Government
Chronicle, Global Mail Canada...
To come? Yeah, these are all
to come. Channel 9 Australia,
Canadian radio...
Can you hear me? This is Al Jazeera.
How are you? Are you OK?
Thank you, sir. Yes, I am.
The weird thing about the media is
while everyone else is talking about
trying to bring Bristol together,
it's in their interest
to prolong the conflict.
We do need to acknowledge
how this has divided people.
What do you say to those who say
we're dismantling
the historical context of the way
British society was built?
Well, I say we're not.
The danger is we get caught up
in symbolic acts
that don't change
underlying conditions.
Just describe for me your emotions
when you saw the statue being
taken down the way it was.
As a city official,
I cannot ignore criminal damage.
But as I've shared,
I could not pretend that
I was anything other than
affronted by the statue.
Colston may have owned
one of my ancestors,
so for the statue to have gone,
in the grand arc of history,
this was the right thing. Right.
It's just been nonstop.
It's been 100 miles an hour
for three, four, five days,
from dealing with the actual issues
around the statue in the harbour,
dealing with the issues in the city,
trying to hold that together,
while making sure what Marvin talks
about in the media
is about a much wider issue here
and about how the city needs to
learn to live with its differences.
And he did Al Jazeera,
which is important.
That talks to some communities
in the city in particular,
but then, the New York Times
is like... That's profile, isn't it?
That's a chance to talk to the world
about some of these issues
from Bristol. And that's quite big.
But to me, the most important
interview is Radio Bristol.
There's an opportunity to start
to widen this debate out.
Let's talk to everyone in the city
and understand why
they feel the way they do.
Simple question to start with -
the management of Colston Hall
described the name as toxic in 2017,
decided then to change it.
The statue's been debated for years.
Do you regret not taking it down?
That's not a simple question,
John, to be honest.
I think it is, actually. We have
a number of challenges facing us -
austerity, the financial situation,
the housing crisis,
child poverty, and racism is
about those underlying conditions,
but if you have a top ten list
of priorities
that you're going to
put in place to tackle racism,
taking down a statue wouldn't be
in that top ten list.
But that statue
is the start of something,
and that could have been led by you.
I think, I mean, there's another
piece of irony here
that if after becoming the first
directly elected black politician
in Europe, suddenly the statue
is my fault...
No, I'm not saying it's your fault,
Marvin Rees.
That's not what I'm saying,
you know that...
I actually found that
quite demoralising.
So rather than saying, "Right,
Marvin, we've got some people
"who are elated at the statue
being torn down,
"some people who sympathise with it
being torn down
"but don't agree with the way
it happened,
"and there were some people who were
dismayed and feeling alienated..."
"How do you as a mayor
hold the city together?"
What he wants to say is, "Do you
regret not taking the statue down?"
That's not trying to get insight
on what we're doing with the city.
It's the smash and grab, simplistic,
superficial search for a clip
for the bulletin that says,
"Mayor of Bristol admits he regrets
not taking a statue down."
Most people don't interact
with real arguments,
they interact with the journalistic
interpretation of the arguments.
And they're getting under-served.
I don't know how to look un-relaxed.
It's a very dangerous moment for me,
I think.
I'm black, I'm mixed race,
I'm from a poor background.
Working class,
welfare class background.
And these questions of race,
belonging,
white people feeling
disenfranchised, political system
not working for poor people,
it's all swirling around.
The danger is that the conversation
on race
remains incredibly immature
and then I get sucked into the
vortex of being a black politician
who only talks about race issues
and I'm not seen as a serious
politician.
That's the danger I'm in
at the moment.
Why are we wiping out our history
that made our city the way it is?
Once we start down this route,
where does it end?
I'm not saying what he did was
right. It was extremely wrong.
That was back then. Do we start
burning down Colston Tower?
Do we start going into the cathedral
and digging up the graves of all
the plantation owners there?
In one of Bristol's museums,
staff are tasked with
the conservation of the statue.
So here he is.
The idea is at the moment
just to stabilise him as he was
when he was put into the dock.
But the paint can flake off,
so we're just trying to
stop that happening.
Well, it's quite apt, isn't it?
The red paint on his hands, he's
got blood on his hands, you know,
seems quite appropriate.
Edward Colston made
much of his fortune from slavery
and he served as Deputy Governor of
the Royal African Company in London.
In his home city of Bristol,
he was also a member of the Society
of Merchant Venturers.
They were instrumental
in establishing Bristol
as a slave-trading port
and their members owned plantations
in the Caribbean.
In 1895, decades after slavery
had been abolished,
members of the Merchant Venturers
were among those
who paid for the statue
and gifted it to the city.
Well into the 21st century,
they continue to support
annual celebrations
to honour Colston
as a philanthropist,
who had donated money to
many of Bristol's institutions.
This city has, over the years,
done a big and intentional job
of elevating Colston.
He's been chosen as the person
to kind of embody the spirit
of the city
and the mythology around it
has been stitched into the city.
It's no wonder that changing that
causes people a sense of imbalance.
CHEERING
I have every sympathy for everybody
who has been trying to get
that statue moved for years.
But I did find it
a little bit over the top
and I was a bit sad to see him
topple into the harbour.
That was my childhood,
that was my growing up,
and it's a shame in that way, but
that's just sentimental attachment.
I joined Colston's Girls in 1959,
believe it or not.
There were no fees in those days.
It was non-fee paying.
And it was supported
partly by the local authority
and partly by the
Merchant Venturers.
Okey-doke.
That's me there,
when I was Head Girl.
It was a wonderful education
because everyone was encouraged to
feel that they could do what they
wanted to do and be whatever
they wanted to be, and be mouthy,
which as you can see has worked!
It was quite liberating,
I suppose, in that way,
for girls in those days.
This is my friend Pammy,
and myself,
with our home-made wreath.
Putting it on Colston's tomb.
To give thanks for the foundation
of the school
was what it was all about.
Commemoration Day,
it was called Commemoration.
Everybody used to call it Commem
for short.
We all had to go to the cathedral
and have this service
and then afterwards,
we'd go and throw our bronze
chrysanthemums at that statue.
I think we were told
it was his favourite flower.
I cannot remember being told our
founder made his money in slaves.
He was seen as a philanthropist.
In the next couple of weeks,
Colston Girls' School are going
to change their name.
How do you feel about that?
Well, I can see it had to happen
because the political climate
has changed.
I'm all supportive
of the Black Lives Matter,
but I don't know where you stop.
Statues of all kinds of so-called
great and wonderful people, Nelson
and Churchill and all that, and
they've all done horrible things.
It's a shame that people feel that
everything has to be erased.
What you need to get rid of
is the racism underpinning all this
and not just focus on some guy
from the 18th century.
The Mayor's Office has received news
that a demonstration
in direct response to Black Lives
Matter and the toppling of Colston
has been planned at one of
the city's war memorials.
I've just realised I've got
a call in my diary, 10:50,
to discuss the protest.
Which protest? The Football...
Football Lads?
From City, Rovers, Swindon
and Cardiff.
Yeah. There's big signs about,
all over the place.
Risk level is medium at the moment.
They're expecting 200-300.
I was a bit concerned by this thing
about the football supporters
coming from elsewhere.
This demonstration seems to be
centred around defending
the Cenotaph.
I mean, nobody in their right mind
is going to want to attack
the Cenotaph, all right?
So we need to make sure that those
demonstrations are about
what they're about
and I'll be much more comfortable
if Bristolians
are at the heart of them.
That's my real feel for that.
ENGINES REV
Protestors, including local bikers
and football fans,
have begun gathering
at the Cenotaph,
just a few yards
from where the Colston statue stood.
It's about left wing and right wing
and not race.
It ain't even about left wing
and right wing.
It's about everyone coming together.
CHANTING AND SHOUTING
Some of the protestors
approach Colston's plinth,
where there are placards
and messages left by the
Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
I thought, "That's a mess.
That should never be there."
I thought, "That statue should never
have been pulled down anyway."
Not without some democratic process
at the very least.
# One Winston Churchill, there's
only one Winston Churchill.... #
Hi, Marvin. How are you, mate?
Yeah, I'm all right, Joe.
It was a tough time, the weekend...
Yeah.
The weekend's a little bit
complicated.
We did have some far right, but
not everyone there was far right,
but we only had two arrests. No big
tear-ups, which is helpful. Yeah.
One of the things I really want
is for white working-class
Bristolians to understand
the interdependence of their story
with black Bristolians, all right?
The common ground.
You've got the history of slavery
in that,
but women, working-class people,
tobacco factories,
that's the rich area for me,
you know, that we share a history
and our struggles are the same.
I went down there last minute.
Everyone's over there, shouting,
"There's only one
Winston Churchill."
# There's only one
Winston Churchill... #
I've walked over.
Some lads gave me a footie up,
I've climbed up
and some lad's shouting,
"Nigel, there's a flag,"
so I've leaned down,
got the British flag
and then I remember a video
of a black lad in London
burning our British flag
and this woman pleading,
begging with him, "Please,
don't burn our British flag."
And so I thought, my grandad did
fight for this war and this flag.
This is our flag
and we're proud of it.
This is our country,
we're proud of our country.
It weren't about black and white,
it weren't about race.
It was about our heritage.
White people got it hard as well.
Let me tell you now,
when you're shouting...
When you're shouting white
privilege, that makes me sad
because, you know,
you ain't seen the way I grew up.
This is Gatcombe Road, quite a few
people's died on this road.
A friend of mine was murdered by a
couple of my other friends just...
Just literally up from that corner,
leaving the pub, they shot him dead.
You know, there was a lad
killed by a 15-year-old boy,
pushing a bike out in front of him.
End of the road, people was
killed by police back in '91.
This is where I grew up, down here.
We lived in the corner, down there.
My mum didn't work.
My stepdad didn't work.
We used to drive round on nicked
motorbikes, like, when I was nine.
Constantly getting took home
by the police. My mind was ruined.
It had domestic violence, drugs...
What we're seeing every day.
I couldn't concentrate to be
educated because I had
so many problems back home,
you know.
I didn't know that statue was
a slave trader who imported
loads of slaves.
No-one cares for a slave trader,
we just care about how it was done.
I think race is overshadowing
the main problem of poverty.
That's what it all is,
because, you know,
the whites got it hard as well.
It's not just the blacks
who've got it hard,
the whites equally got it
just as hard as what they have.
It's not about black and white.
It's about rich and poor.
That's the difference. That's what
people need to understand.
Following the protests at
the Cenotaph, a provocative statue
mocking the demonstrators
has been left near the plinth.
Kev and Saskia want to put
this chav-type statue into the...
Chav statue?!
Yeah. Have you seen it? No.
So it's been chained to a lamppost.
It's really quite offensive,
actually.
No, I don't like that.
No, me neither.
It's a classic
middle-class definition
of what a racist looks like.
It's offensive. Yeah.
And the "Spoiler:
St George was Turkish" thing
is so clearly like,
"You racist chavs."
There's a snobbery in racism,
isn't there?
The placing of the statue
of the chav, right,
the working-class icon,
I feel hugely uncomfortable with it.
I can, from my background,
associate much more...
I'm a Bristol Rovers
supporter, right?
I'll turn up at the football...
I'll go to the football,
talking to, drinking with,
and supporting the team
with those same people.
A lack of law and order can be
very frightening for people,
particularly vulnerable people,
poor people,
and I understand the fear people
have about losing their city
when they see statues coming down
and all the rest of it.
When people describe Bristol,
they always describe it
with this bohemian, individual,
independent mood, right?
I don't see Bristol like that.
The slum clearances
and the War played a huge part
in the way Bristol shaped itself.
You have got council estates
in a ring around the city.
And that means the city centre
has become increasingly gentrified.
And so the people who come
and live in the city centre
and experience Hotwells and Clifton
and Redland and Southville,
that's a very different Bristol
to the one I grew up in.
When I go home to Lockleaze
and visit my sisters,
that hasn't changed.
It doesn't look any different. If
anything, it might even be poorer.
Marvin's background's very similar.
These are two different cities,
right?
I've often heard people describe
over the years,
this is an incredible place,
and it is, in many ways.
But it can be a very hard city
for people,
and it was a hard city for my mum.
Mum had me in 1972. White woman,
brown baby, unmarried, no money.
So it was tough.
Before I was born,
people were telling her
she should have me aborted,
and then when I was born,
she was told that if she was a good
woman, she'd put me up for adoption.
Housing wasn't secure, we ended up
in a refuge for a little bit.
We lived on an estate on the edge
of town, Lawrence Weston.
And I watched my mum struggle,
you know, just to pay bills.
I always remember the day a bill
came in for 88.
I have that number
etched into my head.
I probably was about
seven years old.
And it was like the world stopped.
We had this 88 bill
and we just did not know
how we were going to pay it.
So yeah, I remember that.
So this is my flat
I lived in with my mum
and then my sister
came along as well.
In 1976, Dionne came.
That window was my bedroom window.
And the van...
The nursery van used to come
and collect us
and it would park here and rather
than going out the door,
cos of my kind of like
sense of action,
I used to jump out the window,
and then run up the slope
and jump in the van.
Experiencing racism down here was
mainly about being called names.
Blackie Sambo, chocolate,
and all those kind of things.
My mum used to say,
"Tell them, you may be black,
"but your name's not Sambo."
I never ever wanted my mum to
come out and get involved
cos I didn't want my mum ending up
in a confrontation herself.
I look back on some of the things
I lived as a child and at the time,
I wished I hadn't gone through them,
but it's left me with
a number of things in my politics.
One is I'm quite pragmatic.
You know, there is the perfect world
and there is the world
as we'd like it to be
and there's the world
we have to work with.
And if I can be honest with you,
and this is a very dangerous thing
for me to say, I do carry around
quite a lot of
quiet, controlled anger.
Now I say that's dangerous
cos it's not safe for black people
to admit that they're angry.
In extreme circumstances,
it gets you arrested
and in the United States,
gets you killed, but I am angry.
How can you not be angry
when every day, people like me,
and I don't just mean in terms
of skin colour, but I mean
in class background, are born
destined to die earlier than others?
To become unwell
before other people,
to get poor outcomes
from the education system.
More likely to end up
mentally unwell.
You've got to be angry about that.
It's been ten days
since the statue was taken down.
The national lockdown
is being lifted,
but the mayor's usual face-to-face
meetings with the public
are postponed indefinitely.
Hello, everyone, welcome to
another Facebook live.
As of 4.00 pm today, we've had
720 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
What we don't have in the city
is a meaningful
public transport system...
..brought schemes forward from
Hengrove, Lawrence Weston,
St Anne's. 9,000 homes come through.
We are opening up our toilets
in parks.
Free school meals
over the summer holidays.
It's great to see Marcus Rashford
get real traction with Government.
We're launching the History
Commission, whether it be around
black people, Asian people,
women, working class, unions.
We want to tell
the full Bristol story.
We clearly are going out continuing
to fix potholes.
There are a few things...
While there's been no further
confrontation on the streets,
the mayor's office faces questions
about how it's dealt with
the controversy surrounding
the Colston statue.
Steve Alexis asked in advance
on Facebook,
"Now that it has been dumped,
we have a totally divided city.
"Will the council accept part of the
blame for creating that division?"
Firstly, the council
has caused divisions,
but those divisions existed
irrespective of the council.
It's also worth saying that even if
the statue had been brought down
in a formal way,
it would have caused divisions,
so we have to be quite rounded
in this.
Over the past few days,
there has been a sharp increase
in correspondence
personally directed at Marvin,
with over 1,500 messages received
since the statue was removed.
So I'm just going through all
the post that the mayor
has received in the last week,
and I'm just currently
sorting it out in terms of
what's kind of positive comment,
and what's negative comment,
and what is stuff that
we need to report to the police.
So, so far, we've got kind of
even piles, I would say,
but we've definitely got some stuff
which needs to be reported.
It's very, very abusive.
Yeah, OK.
"Africans are pack animals.
"Ninog lives don't matter."
I think he's missed off a G.
Yeah.
It's supposed to say,
"Nignog lives don't matter."
Probably could have done with
a spellcheck.
Someone has taken the time
to send you a book.
Jolly Little Numbers, I think
it's something from the '50s,
along with a little pin badge
as well.
So a golliwog pin badge.
And, "Ten little nigger boys
jumping in a line.
"One fixed the hole,
then there were nine."
OK, so it's racist subtraction.
Mm.
Yeah, OK.
Yeah.
All right.
But it's got nothing to do
with what we're trying to do,
it's just sad people. This guy's
even put his address on it.
It's just very unhappy people
writing stuff, so what can you do?
Yeah. I suppose the most useful
thing about this is that, you know,
that doey-eyed reality, which people
think the world has moved on,
it's totally different to what it
was when we were younger,
people get a wake-up call to say,
"Actually, it's still out there."
I don't know how I feel about it.
I find it irritating.
It's the, you know, it's the classic
kind of keyboard warrior type thing,
you know, and that irritates me,
because it's pretty kind of gutless.
I've always had like a thought,
though -
what if this is
a serious person?
And I think about my family,
you know, I've got three children
and a wife. I've got to do the
responsible thing for my family.
I don't lose sleep over it.
It's just what it is.
The mayor's office
has just received news of an act
of racially motivated vandalism.
You know that Scipio headstone
in Henbury?
Yeah, the slave kid. It's been
vandalised, it's been smashed.
In Henbury church? Yeah.
Seriously? Yeah.
That's pretty... That's a big piece
of Bristol history. Yeah.
Oh, look. That's such
a beautiful grave.
That's really sad.
There is a lot of agitation
in the city.
That's actually quite concerning.
What's that say?
"Put Colston's statue back,
or things will really heat up."
Yeah, that's a few agitators, innit?
The pulling down of Colston's statue
was not an anti-white
oppressive move.
It was a move about toppling someone
who exploited other people.
That is an overtly racist move.
I mean, it's clearly meant to be
an attack on black people
in that sense, but actually, that's
an attack on Bristol's history,
so it's a...it's a concern.
The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees,
says the tombstone
of an African-born slave
has been smashed in two.
The memorial to the slave
known as Scipio Africanus
has been in the graveyard
of St Mary's Church in Henbury
since 1720.
Mr Rees has appealed to residents
not to go down what he called
a tit-for-tat route.
Didn't realise he was just 18.
I've got children under the age
of 18, and the thought of someone
taking them away and turning them
into a servant accessory
is just horrifying, actually.
I don't think it's possible
as a human being to engage in
horrible acts without it having
some kind of impact on you.
I mean, this isn't even just
an abstract statue.
This is a grave that's
being desecrated, in many ways.
There must be some degree
of discomfort,
or at least I would hope so.
"Scipio Africanus, I'm sorry
on who did this to your grave.
"I hope it's restored soon. RIP."
What we have in the city
is a contrast,
the pulling down of a statue
of someone who elevated themselves
and a humble resting place for
someone who was
one of the world's servants
and one of the world's enslaved.
The contrast couldn't be starker,
really.
The smashing of this headstone
just goes against what I consider
to be universally right.
This is the smashing of a headstone
of one of the world's put upon,
one of the world's voiceless,
and it hit me deep, really.
And it just brought into sight
for me that we're not
in control of this world, you know?
We can do our best
to try and manage it,
but things happen
that are not in our control.
I've grown up in an era
where political apathy seems like
an easy thing for people to
fall into, including myself.
George Floyd's death,
God rest the man's soul,
it's the sort of thing
that is needed at times
to really shake people
from a bit of a slumber.
Black Lives Matter! Black Lives
Matter! Black Lives Matter!
I guess that moment on the plinth
was me really being politicised
for the first time.
I was trying not to be overwhelmed
just by the sheer number of people.
If this is just a moment,
let's go home now.
If this is just a moment,
what are we here for?
I ended up in a band.
We moved from Bath to Bristol
just for the music scene, really.
And I just fell in love
with the place,
like, it's been seven, eight years
now, being in the city,
and feeling like it's home, feeling
like it's been a place
I can really grow as an artist.
We're a very divided city,
though we seem multicultural
from the outside.
We've got pockets of Jamaica.
We've got pockets of Somalia.
I mean, you can't not notice
Clifton on the top of the hill
looking out at the rest.
Just after we voted to leave,
Brexit,
walking through the Bear Pit,
someone decided it was OK to make
monkey chants towards me.
If that moment can galvanise
a racist to open his mouth,
if Trump getting into office can
galvanise America, racist America
to come out of the woodwork,
some stuff that Boris is doing here,
if the bigots feel emboldened
to open their mouth,
this moment has to make us feel
big enough to open our mouths.
# Look, black is beautiful
Black is excellent
# Black is pain, black is joy
Black is evident
# It's working twice as hard
as the people
# You know you're better than cos
you need to do double what they do
# So you can level them
# Black is so much deeper
than just African-American
# Our heritage being severed
# You never got to experiment
with family trees
# Cos they teach you about
famine and greed
# They show you pictures
of your fam on their knees
# Tell us we used to be
barbaric... #
Stuff like this is quicker
to get people out,
but in between all the marches
and all that going on,
we need something that's concrete.
The city feels like it very much
responds to the energy
that's inside it.
It's a very charged place,
and I don't want the energy
that we have to just dissipate.
I don't want to have to have another
person lose their life
for this sort of response
to come again,
so let's take the energy that's
there now and do something with it.
As our first cutting our teeth
in activism,
we have been blocking the sale
of the Rastafari Cultural Centre
in St Pauls, a space that was gifted
for anti-racism work.
The council are now going to tell us
that, today in 2020,
there's no need for this space.
Can't let it happen.
If we stay passive to the things
that are happening in our community,
what hope for the world?
Welcome to today's meeting.
Full details of questions submitted
are on the council's website,
and will be displayed on the screen
as we work through them.
Under Covid restrictions,
the city council's monthly meetings
are being held remotely.
Green question one, Councillor
Lake, do you have a supplementary?
Yes, I do.
Since Marvin became mayor,
Councillor Cleo Lake has been
critical of a lack of support
for Bristol's black communities.
My question was directly
about investment and support
for our black-led institutions
that already exist,
and whether we can get some
commitment from the council
to ensure that decades
of under-resourcing is resolved.
So first of all, you specifically
named a number of organisations.
I can't bypass a process
to specifically say from the outset
that what we will do is get money
to those specific organisations.
That wouldn't be, you know,
a fair and a just thing to do.
Well, it's not easy to be
the overall leader of a city,
let's be honest about that.
I'm sure coming into office,
sections of Bristol would have
thought, "Well, he's just going to
"do X, Y and Z for these people,
because he's from there,"
or this, that, and the other,
which hasn't happened.
Whilst he may, and as an
administration, come up with schemes
like the One City office
and Stepping Up,
which are award-winning programmes
or whatever,
they're all very well,
but they're not radical,
and they're not revolutionary.
We haven't got a revolutionary
mayor, is the bottom line.
Do you think you get given a harder
time from the black community
because you're black?
Not everyone. Not everyone.
Sometimes people can understand
who they are in the fight,
but the moment someone says,
"Well, come sit at the table with me
"and let's come up with a solution,"
they don't know about
making solutions.
What they know about is shouting
analysis and criticisms.
I think it comes also from sometimes
quite a weak understanding
of what politics is.
When you get elected, you don't get
a blank piece of paper
and you just write out your
wishlist and get it all.
It's a very challenging world.
The purpose of being elected
is not just to get a seat
by which you can come and ask me
to do stuff that you could
actually do yourself.
But as I said, come and see me
in between meetings.
Please, you know, the theatre of
a full council meeting...
I came to your office
two weeks ago, Marvin.
I've been ignored.
Go and have a look at
all the meetings we had booked.
What would you have done
differently?
I would have, if I had the
opportunity and the power
to make certain decisions, then
I would have apologised as a city
for our role historically,
and commit to reparations
in whatever way that came through,
and I would have removed the statue.
What do you make of Marvin's defence
of he would just be seen
as the black mayor who kind of
came in and took that down?
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with being the black
mayor who came and took that down?
The day after the statue
was pulled down,
the police launched
a criminal investigation.
Three weeks later, one group
of anti-racism campaigners
gathers outside City Hall
to protest.
So the tearing down of the statue
was not a criminal act.
It was an expression of anger,
not only with the killing
of George Floyd,
but also at the complacency of
Bristol's leading representatives
over three centuries to the crimes
that have been committed
against black people.
The city council
and business community
should now make a public apology
for the role the city has played
in the slave trade.
APPLAUSE
So you've got 50 white people
calling on the black mayor
to apologise for slavery.
It's a fascinating situation.
If I was to step up and apologise,
what would that mean?
Am I to stand in front of a group
of kind of
white progressive activists
apologising for slavery?
It's all just a little bit
more complicated than that, I think.
Marvin Rees,
what his administration has done
is give a statement of evidence
to Avon And Somerset Police.
Those young people that took that
political act are now at risk
of being arrested.
The prosecution of people
who were involved in
bringing the statue down is a really
tricky one for the council.
It's such a sensitive
and emotional subject,
and everyone has
a different opinion,
that you're never going to really
win whichever way it goes.
The police are in a tough spot,
because the whole world saw
that technically a crime
was committed.
For us, we were asked
whether we could give a statement,
which was really a fact-based
evidential statement,
literally that the statue
was there in the morning,
and then at the end of the day,
it was in the harbour,
and we hadn't given permission
for that to happen.
Given the kind of toxic history
of Colston in the city,
could you have chosen not
to have made the report and...?
No, it's criminal damage.
You've got to put the report in.
Politicians don't get to choose
when the criminal justice system
is and is not enacted.
That's very dangerous.
The police do not get to choose
when and not to investigate.
Ultimately, what happens is up to
the Crown Prosecution Service
and the judge.
NEWSREEL: Just before five o'clock
this morning, the empty plinth
which used to carry the statue
of the slave trader Edward Colston
in Bristol was replaced
with a sculpture of
one of the protesters
whose anger brought him down.
I think it's a really good statue,
to be honest,
in comparison to what was there.
It's very nice that someone
from London has come down
and put that there.
Yeah, we love it. I mean, it's so
exciting to wake up to the news
that Marc Quinn had installed it,
so we had to rush down,
you know, before it gets taken down.
But hopefully it won't.
Yeah, hopefully it won't,
but we don't know, do we?
It does a whole lot more to
represent, you know,
where Bristol stands
on the Black Lives Matter issue.
BIKE ENGINES REV
There's the bikers.
They're doing that all over,
whenever anything to do with
Black Lives Matter is going on,
the bikers are driving around
revving their engines.
RADIO: Frank in Hotwells,
your thoughts on this new statue
going up?
It's a farce.
It's an absolute farce.
Now, what if another section
of the same society turn up
and rip this one down
and throw that in the docks?
You have one new message.
This is a complaint
about the statue,
which is a symbol of Black Power
in the United States
that has no place in Bristol.
I've just got off the phone to Alex.
He's telling me
they're anticipating a backlash.
That backlash may not just be
symbolic on statues,
it could be in the lives of
real brown people in the city.
We have to act
before there is another action.
Yeah.
Black lives matter!
All lives matter, my love!
All lives.
A democracy is you vote
to take down the statue.
You don't rip it down...
So I had an email saying it's going
to be on Channel 4 News tonight,
so they're obviously there
to film it.
I had a call
from BBC Radio Bristol,
who think we're in on it.
We need to be clear we're not.
I know, I have been clear
that we're not,
but it looks like we've given them
permission and we've been
part of this, like, secrecy.
"I am compelled to write to you
to encourage the immediate
"and quiet removal of the
undemocratic and divisive statue
"of Jen Reid."
"I hereby object
to the BLM statue
"that has been ILLEGALLY
mounted in Bristol.
"I find this offensive
and unlawful."
"Time for Marvin
to get off the fence
"and get his act together
and do his job."
"This is a really beautiful symbol
"of what the toppling of
the Colston statue represents."
"Take it down
before it gets ripped down."
"I think you'd better take it down
before the white statue protectors
"come down - then you will have
a full-scale riot."
"Sod the decking statue.
"What are you doing
to save mass redundancies?"
The police, their intel is it
will probably be attacked tonight.
Because it's made of resin... Yeah.
..it's dead easy to smash up,
so there's a council team
ready to remove it.
So I guess our decision
is based on this timeline
of it being attacked.
So play it out, right?
What if it does get smashed?
Yeah.
We've been warning from the start,
we've been very clear,
we want the space, we've been very
clear about opportunists
jumping into the situation to try
and make their name
and tell their story, right?
Yeah.
Sometimes you need you need to allow
people to feel a bit of the pain.
If it gets smashed, isn't that
just another bit of PR for him?
So I've just had a phone call
from someone who says if the mayor
doesn't take it down, him and 20
of his mates from the south
of England are going to come
up to Bristol
and they're going to
take it down themselves.
ARGUING
That was not...
We've not voted for...
It doesn't need to be voted for.
Occasionally,
people power takes over,
and that is a symbol against racism.
Do you think things have ever
got better in the world
without someone breaking the law?
And you, by arguing against it,
are in fact...
Say it, go on.
..pushing forward that type of
culture.
If you speak out,
you're labelled as a racist.
No-one here labelled you racist.
My concern is there's a huge
voice in the city who think
it's absolutely wonderful.
Yeah, right, probably mostly
a middle-class white audience
are like, "Oh, it's brilliant.
Isn't it great? Isn't it artistic?"
And then it gets smashed,
and then it's more vitriol
aimed at the people
that have done it,
and it's still not bringing
these groups together.
I don't know.
Sometimes people need an opportunity
to see where things could go.
The question is,
it's quite a decent statue,
it's a decent sculpture
of a black woman.
Therefore, the image of that being
smashed is strong. Yeah.
What if people decide they want
to put a rope around it,
pull it down
and drag it into the harbour?
I just think that would be horrific.
I'm just worried as well about
the woman it's of. She's local.
She's now going to be on the news,
and I just worry that she perhaps
hasn't fully understood
the implications that could
come back to her and her family.
There ain't no clean decisions
here.
My sense is relax about it,
as much as we can relax.
You made a statement,
we'll give you the, you know,
you can have the plinth for the day,
you know, you've had your time,
and you've had your bit
on Channel 4, and then, you know,
and then we take it tomorrow
and we'll say,
"OK, so we'll look after it,
but by the way, Marc,
"this is the cost
in terms of our staff time,
"how much it cost
in terms of police time."
We'll send him the bill for that,
because if we pay for it,
it comes out of our budget.
But he needs to know you can't
run around doing what you want
without accounting
for the consequences,
be it the social consequences
or the financial consequences.
And I find that frustrating.
So let's do that.
Andy, how are you doing? You a fan
of the London arts world, are you?
My sense is that we leave it
till tomorrow.
All right, Andy, cheers, take care,
bye.
I think an empty plinth is one
of the most powerful statements
we have at this moment in time
in the city, because it represents
a city that's taking time to stop
and think about its future.
The best way forward for the city
would be to
begin to come to terms
with its full history,
and within that context, be able
to have a more informed view
on who it wants to honour,
if anyone.
This circumvents that process.
Now, I recognise
that it's an incredible statue.
I recognise that.
But as a political leader,
you don't have the luxury
of just stopping at
the first bus stop of meaning.
When you see an event happen,
you have to think,
"OK, how is this going to be
interpreted by other people,
"and what are
the unintended consequences?"
We just got back from holiday,
escaping Bristol
for a couple of weeks,
which was fantastic.
Within an hour, get the police
knocking on the door.
The police have warned Marvin
and his wife Kirsten
that there are direct threats
being made to their family.
They've had anti-terrorist
intelligence,
like, those three words together,
it's like, "What?"
They say it's low-level,
but we want you aware,
and you're thinking, "OK, yes,"
but your head's spinning,
because you're thinking of all
the what-ifs, you know, Jo Cox,
stories you hear of acid
just being thrown in people's faces.
People know where we live.
They know our address,
because it was on the ballot,
which is infuriating as well.
I showed you some moves.
You did show me some moves!
We have weapons
in various parts of our house.
If I come downstairs,
I'm not coming downstairs to lose.
I'm coming downstairs to win.
We had a threat about five weeks
ago, so we were already
in conversation with upping security
a bit more from the last,
so each threat, it becomes
a little bit more secure.
With the kids,
they saw the first threat,
because it was blatantly
written out,
"Marvin must die," on our sidewalk.
So when I woke up that morning,
opened up my daughter's curtains,
who's on the front of the house,
I saw it in big white painting.
Marvin was in the shower.
I was furious,
"Have you seen?!",
and then I wanted to just
swear my head off on Facebook.
I was like, "Don't do it."
So, yeah.
Our neighbour said
if he'd seen it first,
he would have put a T on the end,
so it would have said,
"Marvin must diet."
But he obviously didn't see it.
What is amazing is numerous
neighbours said, any issue,
you know, we've got your back.
You said that I need to
take these...
..take these, what, these threats
more seriously?
I do take them seriously,
but I don't show it,
and I don't feel physically
threatened on a day-to-day basis.
When I get angry,
and that is the word,
is thinking about my family,
Kirsten and the children,
people kind of invading that space.
But that I think is a white-black
thing, too, that Marvin's...
He has resilience, because it's not
new to him to be threatened.
For me, it is.
Do you ever think,
"I wish he didn't do this"?
No.
Well, probably...
..if I'm honest, yeah.
Like, being away by the sea,
I grew up by the sea,
so yeah, I want to escape,
run away.
But also, you've got to
do something in life,
not just swim every day in the sea.
The threats to Marvin are part
of a rise in racist incidents
reported in the city
over the summer.
Sari has seen a backlash to both
the toppling of the statue,
but also when Jen Reid's statue
went up.
Today, I've had about
four referrals.
Eggs thrown at the house
was one of them,
cars being attacked and damaged,
windows being put through.
We had a mum who'd just moved from
one area from racial harassment,
had moved to another area,
and the son had been threatened
with being stabbed,
and then she'd had an air gun
shot through the window
over her and her baby's head
in the sitting room.
One referral came in today
where a child was in the park,
and they were attacked by the mother
of some other children in that park,
and they were throttled and told
that, "I'm going to send you back
"to the cotton fields, and I'm going
to burn your family's house down,"
and you can see the language there
is linked to slavery.
While Marvin was on holiday, one
racist attack left a young black man
with life-threatening injuries.
A hospital worker
has been left scarred
and frightened for his safety
after being seriously injured
in a racially-aggravated
hit and run.
The 21-year-old was walking
to the bus stop after finishing work
at Southmead Hospital in Bristol.
Witnesses say a car
was driven at him deliberately
before two men shouted racial abuse.
We're going up to meet the young man
who was attacked -
I mean, you could call it
an attempted lynching -
by some people driving a car
into him.
He's out of hospital now,
and he's back home.
These moments of crisis come,
famously, it's said, crisis comes
with both threats and opportunities,
and the threat is,
if we can't hold it together,
that...
..the incidents will feed on each
other and then they would escalate,
and our society would disintegrate.
The opportunity is it pulls the lid
back, as it were, on our workings,
and we discover all these
weaknesses, these animosities,
hatreds, inequalities in our
society, and we get an opportunity
to decide whether we're going to
confront them or not.
How is your recovery?
Well, it's going good at the moment.
Yeah, just keep getting better
and better. I'm quite an active guy,
like playing football,
doing loads of stuff, like going
into the studio, I do music as well.
So just the fact
that I can't do all of that,
I've just being stopped,
and I'm just in the house,
just, it gets to you mentally,
in a way,
because you just start thinking
of it over and over again. Yeah.
His first thought was for his mother
when he was lying on the ground.
He couldn't actually contact her
because the phone
didn't recognise him.
His facial recognition on the phone
didn't work. That stupid thing,
face recognition.
And the second thought
was for everybody else.
In Bristol. To warn them. Yeah.
We're lucky he's recovering,
but the motive of those people,
what they wanted to do to our son
and everything, is so horrific.
I don't feel safe for my family,
or for anyone out there
as well, of the black community,
and I don't want any other family
to go through this.
If they can do it in broad daylight,
so who is safe now in this city?
Yeah.
Football is probably one thing
I'm going to miss, to be fair,
because I don't even know
if I can head a football
with all these injuries right now.
What's your team in Bristol?
Bristol City. Bristol City?
Yeah. What about you?
Both of them.
LAUGHTER
That's the best way to play it,
cos you can't be on one side.
I've got a list of things here
just about trying to make sure
you're getting what you need,
physiotherapy and all that.
The emotional support
is important to you.
And then we'll talk about
how do we keep it high profile
with the police.
And then as much as it means
anything, you know,
you're not alone.
Like I mean, you were the one
who went through the incident,
but it's not invisible.
Yeah. You know, and there are
a lot of people who really care.
After this stuff happened,
I recorded a song to just like...
You feel kind of better
when you make a song or something,
and plus it's spreading awareness
and so on as well.
# First things first
I'm happy to be alive
# I wanna thank G-O-D
# And everyone that helped
my family
# They've really been through
a L-O-# I can never understand a racist
# Why do they hate so B-A-D?
# We've been oppressed
for a long time
# When I think about it, it's S-A-D
# How can you try and kill a man
for the colour of his skin?
# Man, that's outrageous
# Driving a car into an innocent guy
for no reason, that's so brainless
# When these... #
Politics is so much,
such a kind of a crap game.
You know, you try and do your best
and all that,
and you've just got this swirl
around you of conspiracy,
subterfuge, attacks, hitbacks,
and all this nonsense
that goes on.
And every now and again,
you get an opportunity to ground it.
# Soon I'll be just fine, like
Soon I'll be just fine. #
The pain and agony
his mum must experience
must be terrifying for her.
And I hate to think what must happen
when she lies down at night
and she thinks about her children
getting through tomorrow.
In response to the threats
to Marvin,
security is increased
for the mayor's office.
OK, good morning.
My name is Paul Lacey,
I'm from Avon And Somerset Police.
I'm here today to give you
a presentation
on corrosive substance attacks.
There are some quite graphic images,
but it is quite important
you understand the effects of
what acids and alkalines
can do to a human being.
Black Lives Matter!
Black Lives Matter!
Over the following months,
Black Lives Matter protests
continue to be held peacefully
in the city.
..your buildings.
We are the architects of our future.
APPLAUSE
Some of the city's institutions
renounced their association
with Colston.
Colston Hall
is renamed Bristol Beacon,
and Colston's Girls' School
becomes Montpelier High School.
We've got a city
that's gone through a huge event,
you know, very challenging,
and we've held ourselves together,
and I'm really proud of the way
we've held ourselves together.
That doesn't mean it's easy,
doesn't mean there aren't tensions,
and we've got these fractures,
but Bristol's still together.
SHOUTING, WHISTLING
But nine months after the statue
was toppled,
a demonstration
dubbed Kill The Bill
by opponents of a new law
restricting public protests
targets a police station a few
hundred yards from Colston's plinth.
SHOUTING
Bad day, bad hangover this morning,
Marvin, I'm thinking for the city.
Absolutely.
It's a shameful day after a year
of great pride in Bristol.
"You allowed BLM slash Marxists
to take down the statue of Colston,
"you have allowed the dregs of
the Labour membership to protest,
"defecate in the street,
and attack the police.
"Shame on you, Mr Mayor."
One of the Conservative councillors
wrote an email
to all the councillors saying I
should be hanging my head in shame
because my involvement with
Black Lives Matter et al,
as he referred to it, I guess, is
the cause of what's happened today.
I absolutely condemn the violence
we saw in Bristol last night.
It was a display of selfish,
self-indulgent,
self-centred violence.
This last year has been
an incredible source of pride,
actually. It's been amazing
to be able to talk about
how we as a city have navigated
incredibly tense situations
and had tense conversations,
had the potential for conflict,
and actually move through it.
Those people who came and brought
violence to Bristol last night
tried to steal that from us,
and it's not welcome.
I mean, it's a challenging moment.
How we've overcome this year,
this year of loss for so many,
that's what we should be talking
about, how we stand together,
and build our future together.
Thank you, Bristol.
Cities are complicated.
The people are afraid of tension,
but tension in and of itself
isn't necessarily bad.
And we've got some choices
as a city.
We can ignore it and ultimately
try and stuff it back in the box,
we can allow those tensions
to be hijacked by ignorance
or opportunistic leaders
who want to appeal to a base
and get some cheap power,
or we can engage with that tension
and see it as an opportunity
to learn, and come out stronger
at the other end.
And this really goes
to the heart of me.
I've got a fundamental contradiction
in my existence,
being a mixed-race man
from a working-class background.
Racism is real.
It is real and raw.
There is such a thing
called white privilege,
and I'm on the wrong side
of that white privilege,
because I'm not white.
But my white mum did not lead
a life of privilege.
And I hope that as a city,
we can be a place that shows
a mature approach to grapple
with those complexities
and keep itself together.
In the summer of 2020,
one city in Britain would become
the focus of international
attention after the murder
of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Overnight, Minneapolis on fire.
The situation here in Santa Monica,
California, is very fluid.
A storm of anti-racism protests,
captured in dramatic news reports,
spread across the United States
and the world.
A very serious escalation of
disorder outside Downing Street.
And when this storm
landed in Bristol,
a statue of a slave trader
was torn down.
CHEERING
The world's media
descended on Bristol.
UNTRANSLATED
In another British city,
this is Bristol,
a statue of a 17th-century
slave owner was...
..taken down
and tossed into the water.
CHEERING
Caught in the eye of the storm
was the city's mayor, Marvin Rees,
the first directly elected
black mayor of a city in Europe.
Mr Rees, do you support
the police in their search
for those responsible for
criminal damage,
or do you support
the tearing down of the statue?
Putting out those kind of binary
options really doesn't help us
navigate a complicated world,
Krishnan.
There is something horrific about
having a slave trader's statue
in the middle of your city, and yet
there are people who feel that
they're losing a piece of themselves
with the statue being hauled down,
and all those things
are true at the same time.
Brilliant, as far as I'm concerned.
Every time I've seen it,
I felt sick.
It's just an excuse
for premeditated violence.
It was Bristol coming together
and saying, "You know what?
We're going to support each other."
How many statues
are we going to destroy?
How many buildings do we deface
before we've got history
looking the way we want it?
If you can't live with it,
why do you come and live here?
This film began following the Mayor
and the people of Bristol
in the immediate aftermath of
one of the defining moments of 2020.
I'm hoping that we stay away
from overt street conflict.
If we don't handle the next few days
and weeks well,
then clearly there's going to be
a lot more dry tinder, as it were,
for people to put sparks to.
POLICE SIREN
It's been five days since
the Colston statue was taken down
and the international media's
focus on the mayor's office
is continuing to build.
New York Times, Local Government
Chronicle, Global Mail Canada...
To come? Yeah, these are all
to come. Channel 9 Australia,
Canadian radio...
Can you hear me? This is Al Jazeera.
How are you? Are you OK?
Thank you, sir. Yes, I am.
The weird thing about the media is
while everyone else is talking about
trying to bring Bristol together,
it's in their interest
to prolong the conflict.
We do need to acknowledge
how this has divided people.
What do you say to those who say
we're dismantling
the historical context of the way
British society was built?
Well, I say we're not.
The danger is we get caught up
in symbolic acts
that don't change
underlying conditions.
Just describe for me your emotions
when you saw the statue being
taken down the way it was.
As a city official,
I cannot ignore criminal damage.
But as I've shared,
I could not pretend that
I was anything other than
affronted by the statue.
Colston may have owned
one of my ancestors,
so for the statue to have gone,
in the grand arc of history,
this was the right thing. Right.
It's just been nonstop.
It's been 100 miles an hour
for three, four, five days,
from dealing with the actual issues
around the statue in the harbour,
dealing with the issues in the city,
trying to hold that together,
while making sure what Marvin talks
about in the media
is about a much wider issue here
and about how the city needs to
learn to live with its differences.
And he did Al Jazeera,
which is important.
That talks to some communities
in the city in particular,
but then, the New York Times
is like... That's profile, isn't it?
That's a chance to talk to the world
about some of these issues
from Bristol. And that's quite big.
But to me, the most important
interview is Radio Bristol.
There's an opportunity to start
to widen this debate out.
Let's talk to everyone in the city
and understand why
they feel the way they do.
Simple question to start with -
the management of Colston Hall
described the name as toxic in 2017,
decided then to change it.
The statue's been debated for years.
Do you regret not taking it down?
That's not a simple question,
John, to be honest.
I think it is, actually. We have
a number of challenges facing us -
austerity, the financial situation,
the housing crisis,
child poverty, and racism is
about those underlying conditions,
but if you have a top ten list
of priorities
that you're going to
put in place to tackle racism,
taking down a statue wouldn't be
in that top ten list.
But that statue
is the start of something,
and that could have been led by you.
I think, I mean, there's another
piece of irony here
that if after becoming the first
directly elected black politician
in Europe, suddenly the statue
is my fault...
No, I'm not saying it's your fault,
Marvin Rees.
That's not what I'm saying,
you know that...
I actually found that
quite demoralising.
So rather than saying, "Right,
Marvin, we've got some people
"who are elated at the statue
being torn down,
"some people who sympathise with it
being torn down
"but don't agree with the way
it happened,
"and there were some people who were
dismayed and feeling alienated..."
"How do you as a mayor
hold the city together?"
What he wants to say is, "Do you
regret not taking the statue down?"
That's not trying to get insight
on what we're doing with the city.
It's the smash and grab, simplistic,
superficial search for a clip
for the bulletin that says,
"Mayor of Bristol admits he regrets
not taking a statue down."
Most people don't interact
with real arguments,
they interact with the journalistic
interpretation of the arguments.
And they're getting under-served.
I don't know how to look un-relaxed.
It's a very dangerous moment for me,
I think.
I'm black, I'm mixed race,
I'm from a poor background.
Working class,
welfare class background.
And these questions of race,
belonging,
white people feeling
disenfranchised, political system
not working for poor people,
it's all swirling around.
The danger is that the conversation
on race
remains incredibly immature
and then I get sucked into the
vortex of being a black politician
who only talks about race issues
and I'm not seen as a serious
politician.
That's the danger I'm in
at the moment.
Why are we wiping out our history
that made our city the way it is?
Once we start down this route,
where does it end?
I'm not saying what he did was
right. It was extremely wrong.
That was back then. Do we start
burning down Colston Tower?
Do we start going into the cathedral
and digging up the graves of all
the plantation owners there?
In one of Bristol's museums,
staff are tasked with
the conservation of the statue.
So here he is.
The idea is at the moment
just to stabilise him as he was
when he was put into the dock.
But the paint can flake off,
so we're just trying to
stop that happening.
Well, it's quite apt, isn't it?
The red paint on his hands, he's
got blood on his hands, you know,
seems quite appropriate.
Edward Colston made
much of his fortune from slavery
and he served as Deputy Governor of
the Royal African Company in London.
In his home city of Bristol,
he was also a member of the Society
of Merchant Venturers.
They were instrumental
in establishing Bristol
as a slave-trading port
and their members owned plantations
in the Caribbean.
In 1895, decades after slavery
had been abolished,
members of the Merchant Venturers
were among those
who paid for the statue
and gifted it to the city.
Well into the 21st century,
they continue to support
annual celebrations
to honour Colston
as a philanthropist,
who had donated money to
many of Bristol's institutions.
This city has, over the years,
done a big and intentional job
of elevating Colston.
He's been chosen as the person
to kind of embody the spirit
of the city
and the mythology around it
has been stitched into the city.
It's no wonder that changing that
causes people a sense of imbalance.
CHEERING
I have every sympathy for everybody
who has been trying to get
that statue moved for years.
But I did find it
a little bit over the top
and I was a bit sad to see him
topple into the harbour.
That was my childhood,
that was my growing up,
and it's a shame in that way, but
that's just sentimental attachment.
I joined Colston's Girls in 1959,
believe it or not.
There were no fees in those days.
It was non-fee paying.
And it was supported
partly by the local authority
and partly by the
Merchant Venturers.
Okey-doke.
That's me there,
when I was Head Girl.
It was a wonderful education
because everyone was encouraged to
feel that they could do what they
wanted to do and be whatever
they wanted to be, and be mouthy,
which as you can see has worked!
It was quite liberating,
I suppose, in that way,
for girls in those days.
This is my friend Pammy,
and myself,
with our home-made wreath.
Putting it on Colston's tomb.
To give thanks for the foundation
of the school
was what it was all about.
Commemoration Day,
it was called Commemoration.
Everybody used to call it Commem
for short.
We all had to go to the cathedral
and have this service
and then afterwards,
we'd go and throw our bronze
chrysanthemums at that statue.
I think we were told
it was his favourite flower.
I cannot remember being told our
founder made his money in slaves.
He was seen as a philanthropist.
In the next couple of weeks,
Colston Girls' School are going
to change their name.
How do you feel about that?
Well, I can see it had to happen
because the political climate
has changed.
I'm all supportive
of the Black Lives Matter,
but I don't know where you stop.
Statues of all kinds of so-called
great and wonderful people, Nelson
and Churchill and all that, and
they've all done horrible things.
It's a shame that people feel that
everything has to be erased.
What you need to get rid of
is the racism underpinning all this
and not just focus on some guy
from the 18th century.
The Mayor's Office has received news
that a demonstration
in direct response to Black Lives
Matter and the toppling of Colston
has been planned at one of
the city's war memorials.
I've just realised I've got
a call in my diary, 10:50,
to discuss the protest.
Which protest? The Football...
Football Lads?
From City, Rovers, Swindon
and Cardiff.
Yeah. There's big signs about,
all over the place.
Risk level is medium at the moment.
They're expecting 200-300.
I was a bit concerned by this thing
about the football supporters
coming from elsewhere.
This demonstration seems to be
centred around defending
the Cenotaph.
I mean, nobody in their right mind
is going to want to attack
the Cenotaph, all right?
So we need to make sure that those
demonstrations are about
what they're about
and I'll be much more comfortable
if Bristolians
are at the heart of them.
That's my real feel for that.
ENGINES REV
Protestors, including local bikers
and football fans,
have begun gathering
at the Cenotaph,
just a few yards
from where the Colston statue stood.
It's about left wing and right wing
and not race.
It ain't even about left wing
and right wing.
It's about everyone coming together.
CHANTING AND SHOUTING
Some of the protestors
approach Colston's plinth,
where there are placards
and messages left by the
Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
I thought, "That's a mess.
That should never be there."
I thought, "That statue should never
have been pulled down anyway."
Not without some democratic process
at the very least.
# One Winston Churchill, there's
only one Winston Churchill.... #
Hi, Marvin. How are you, mate?
Yeah, I'm all right, Joe.
It was a tough time, the weekend...
Yeah.
The weekend's a little bit
complicated.
We did have some far right, but
not everyone there was far right,
but we only had two arrests. No big
tear-ups, which is helpful. Yeah.
One of the things I really want
is for white working-class
Bristolians to understand
the interdependence of their story
with black Bristolians, all right?
The common ground.
You've got the history of slavery
in that,
but women, working-class people,
tobacco factories,
that's the rich area for me,
you know, that we share a history
and our struggles are the same.
I went down there last minute.
Everyone's over there, shouting,
"There's only one
Winston Churchill."
# There's only one
Winston Churchill... #
I've walked over.
Some lads gave me a footie up,
I've climbed up
and some lad's shouting,
"Nigel, there's a flag,"
so I've leaned down,
got the British flag
and then I remember a video
of a black lad in London
burning our British flag
and this woman pleading,
begging with him, "Please,
don't burn our British flag."
And so I thought, my grandad did
fight for this war and this flag.
This is our flag
and we're proud of it.
This is our country,
we're proud of our country.
It weren't about black and white,
it weren't about race.
It was about our heritage.
White people got it hard as well.
Let me tell you now,
when you're shouting...
When you're shouting white
privilege, that makes me sad
because, you know,
you ain't seen the way I grew up.
This is Gatcombe Road, quite a few
people's died on this road.
A friend of mine was murdered by a
couple of my other friends just...
Just literally up from that corner,
leaving the pub, they shot him dead.
You know, there was a lad
killed by a 15-year-old boy,
pushing a bike out in front of him.
End of the road, people was
killed by police back in '91.
This is where I grew up, down here.
We lived in the corner, down there.
My mum didn't work.
My stepdad didn't work.
We used to drive round on nicked
motorbikes, like, when I was nine.
Constantly getting took home
by the police. My mind was ruined.
It had domestic violence, drugs...
What we're seeing every day.
I couldn't concentrate to be
educated because I had
so many problems back home,
you know.
I didn't know that statue was
a slave trader who imported
loads of slaves.
No-one cares for a slave trader,
we just care about how it was done.
I think race is overshadowing
the main problem of poverty.
That's what it all is,
because, you know,
the whites got it hard as well.
It's not just the blacks
who've got it hard,
the whites equally got it
just as hard as what they have.
It's not about black and white.
It's about rich and poor.
That's the difference. That's what
people need to understand.
Following the protests at
the Cenotaph, a provocative statue
mocking the demonstrators
has been left near the plinth.
Kev and Saskia want to put
this chav-type statue into the...
Chav statue?!
Yeah. Have you seen it? No.
So it's been chained to a lamppost.
It's really quite offensive,
actually.
No, I don't like that.
No, me neither.
It's a classic
middle-class definition
of what a racist looks like.
It's offensive. Yeah.
And the "Spoiler:
St George was Turkish" thing
is so clearly like,
"You racist chavs."
There's a snobbery in racism,
isn't there?
The placing of the statue
of the chav, right,
the working-class icon,
I feel hugely uncomfortable with it.
I can, from my background,
associate much more...
I'm a Bristol Rovers
supporter, right?
I'll turn up at the football...
I'll go to the football,
talking to, drinking with,
and supporting the team
with those same people.
A lack of law and order can be
very frightening for people,
particularly vulnerable people,
poor people,
and I understand the fear people
have about losing their city
when they see statues coming down
and all the rest of it.
When people describe Bristol,
they always describe it
with this bohemian, individual,
independent mood, right?
I don't see Bristol like that.
The slum clearances
and the War played a huge part
in the way Bristol shaped itself.
You have got council estates
in a ring around the city.
And that means the city centre
has become increasingly gentrified.
And so the people who come
and live in the city centre
and experience Hotwells and Clifton
and Redland and Southville,
that's a very different Bristol
to the one I grew up in.
When I go home to Lockleaze
and visit my sisters,
that hasn't changed.
It doesn't look any different. If
anything, it might even be poorer.
Marvin's background's very similar.
These are two different cities,
right?
I've often heard people describe
over the years,
this is an incredible place,
and it is, in many ways.
But it can be a very hard city
for people,
and it was a hard city for my mum.
Mum had me in 1972. White woman,
brown baby, unmarried, no money.
So it was tough.
Before I was born,
people were telling her
she should have me aborted,
and then when I was born,
she was told that if she was a good
woman, she'd put me up for adoption.
Housing wasn't secure, we ended up
in a refuge for a little bit.
We lived on an estate on the edge
of town, Lawrence Weston.
And I watched my mum struggle,
you know, just to pay bills.
I always remember the day a bill
came in for 88.
I have that number
etched into my head.
I probably was about
seven years old.
And it was like the world stopped.
We had this 88 bill
and we just did not know
how we were going to pay it.
So yeah, I remember that.
So this is my flat
I lived in with my mum
and then my sister
came along as well.
In 1976, Dionne came.
That window was my bedroom window.
And the van...
The nursery van used to come
and collect us
and it would park here and rather
than going out the door,
cos of my kind of like
sense of action,
I used to jump out the window,
and then run up the slope
and jump in the van.
Experiencing racism down here was
mainly about being called names.
Blackie Sambo, chocolate,
and all those kind of things.
My mum used to say,
"Tell them, you may be black,
"but your name's not Sambo."
I never ever wanted my mum to
come out and get involved
cos I didn't want my mum ending up
in a confrontation herself.
I look back on some of the things
I lived as a child and at the time,
I wished I hadn't gone through them,
but it's left me with
a number of things in my politics.
One is I'm quite pragmatic.
You know, there is the perfect world
and there is the world
as we'd like it to be
and there's the world
we have to work with.
And if I can be honest with you,
and this is a very dangerous thing
for me to say, I do carry around
quite a lot of
quiet, controlled anger.
Now I say that's dangerous
cos it's not safe for black people
to admit that they're angry.
In extreme circumstances,
it gets you arrested
and in the United States,
gets you killed, but I am angry.
How can you not be angry
when every day, people like me,
and I don't just mean in terms
of skin colour, but I mean
in class background, are born
destined to die earlier than others?
To become unwell
before other people,
to get poor outcomes
from the education system.
More likely to end up
mentally unwell.
You've got to be angry about that.
It's been ten days
since the statue was taken down.
The national lockdown
is being lifted,
but the mayor's usual face-to-face
meetings with the public
are postponed indefinitely.
Hello, everyone, welcome to
another Facebook live.
As of 4.00 pm today, we've had
720 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
What we don't have in the city
is a meaningful
public transport system...
..brought schemes forward from
Hengrove, Lawrence Weston,
St Anne's. 9,000 homes come through.
We are opening up our toilets
in parks.
Free school meals
over the summer holidays.
It's great to see Marcus Rashford
get real traction with Government.
We're launching the History
Commission, whether it be around
black people, Asian people,
women, working class, unions.
We want to tell
the full Bristol story.
We clearly are going out continuing
to fix potholes.
There are a few things...
While there's been no further
confrontation on the streets,
the mayor's office faces questions
about how it's dealt with
the controversy surrounding
the Colston statue.
Steve Alexis asked in advance
on Facebook,
"Now that it has been dumped,
we have a totally divided city.
"Will the council accept part of the
blame for creating that division?"
Firstly, the council
has caused divisions,
but those divisions existed
irrespective of the council.
It's also worth saying that even if
the statue had been brought down
in a formal way,
it would have caused divisions,
so we have to be quite rounded
in this.
Over the past few days,
there has been a sharp increase
in correspondence
personally directed at Marvin,
with over 1,500 messages received
since the statue was removed.
So I'm just going through all
the post that the mayor
has received in the last week,
and I'm just currently
sorting it out in terms of
what's kind of positive comment,
and what's negative comment,
and what is stuff that
we need to report to the police.
So, so far, we've got kind of
even piles, I would say,
but we've definitely got some stuff
which needs to be reported.
It's very, very abusive.
Yeah, OK.
"Africans are pack animals.
"Ninog lives don't matter."
I think he's missed off a G.
Yeah.
It's supposed to say,
"Nignog lives don't matter."
Probably could have done with
a spellcheck.
Someone has taken the time
to send you a book.
Jolly Little Numbers, I think
it's something from the '50s,
along with a little pin badge
as well.
So a golliwog pin badge.
And, "Ten little nigger boys
jumping in a line.
"One fixed the hole,
then there were nine."
OK, so it's racist subtraction.
Mm.
Yeah, OK.
Yeah.
All right.
But it's got nothing to do
with what we're trying to do,
it's just sad people. This guy's
even put his address on it.
It's just very unhappy people
writing stuff, so what can you do?
Yeah. I suppose the most useful
thing about this is that, you know,
that doey-eyed reality, which people
think the world has moved on,
it's totally different to what it
was when we were younger,
people get a wake-up call to say,
"Actually, it's still out there."
I don't know how I feel about it.
I find it irritating.
It's the, you know, it's the classic
kind of keyboard warrior type thing,
you know, and that irritates me,
because it's pretty kind of gutless.
I've always had like a thought,
though -
what if this is
a serious person?
And I think about my family,
you know, I've got three children
and a wife. I've got to do the
responsible thing for my family.
I don't lose sleep over it.
It's just what it is.
The mayor's office
has just received news of an act
of racially motivated vandalism.
You know that Scipio headstone
in Henbury?
Yeah, the slave kid. It's been
vandalised, it's been smashed.
In Henbury church? Yeah.
Seriously? Yeah.
That's pretty... That's a big piece
of Bristol history. Yeah.
Oh, look. That's such
a beautiful grave.
That's really sad.
There is a lot of agitation
in the city.
That's actually quite concerning.
What's that say?
"Put Colston's statue back,
or things will really heat up."
Yeah, that's a few agitators, innit?
The pulling down of Colston's statue
was not an anti-white
oppressive move.
It was a move about toppling someone
who exploited other people.
That is an overtly racist move.
I mean, it's clearly meant to be
an attack on black people
in that sense, but actually, that's
an attack on Bristol's history,
so it's a...it's a concern.
The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees,
says the tombstone
of an African-born slave
has been smashed in two.
The memorial to the slave
known as Scipio Africanus
has been in the graveyard
of St Mary's Church in Henbury
since 1720.
Mr Rees has appealed to residents
not to go down what he called
a tit-for-tat route.
Didn't realise he was just 18.
I've got children under the age
of 18, and the thought of someone
taking them away and turning them
into a servant accessory
is just horrifying, actually.
I don't think it's possible
as a human being to engage in
horrible acts without it having
some kind of impact on you.
I mean, this isn't even just
an abstract statue.
This is a grave that's
being desecrated, in many ways.
There must be some degree
of discomfort,
or at least I would hope so.
"Scipio Africanus, I'm sorry
on who did this to your grave.
"I hope it's restored soon. RIP."
What we have in the city
is a contrast,
the pulling down of a statue
of someone who elevated themselves
and a humble resting place for
someone who was
one of the world's servants
and one of the world's enslaved.
The contrast couldn't be starker,
really.
The smashing of this headstone
just goes against what I consider
to be universally right.
This is the smashing of a headstone
of one of the world's put upon,
one of the world's voiceless,
and it hit me deep, really.
And it just brought into sight
for me that we're not
in control of this world, you know?
We can do our best
to try and manage it,
but things happen
that are not in our control.
I've grown up in an era
where political apathy seems like
an easy thing for people to
fall into, including myself.
George Floyd's death,
God rest the man's soul,
it's the sort of thing
that is needed at times
to really shake people
from a bit of a slumber.
Black Lives Matter! Black Lives
Matter! Black Lives Matter!
I guess that moment on the plinth
was me really being politicised
for the first time.
I was trying not to be overwhelmed
just by the sheer number of people.
If this is just a moment,
let's go home now.
If this is just a moment,
what are we here for?
I ended up in a band.
We moved from Bath to Bristol
just for the music scene, really.
And I just fell in love
with the place,
like, it's been seven, eight years
now, being in the city,
and feeling like it's home, feeling
like it's been a place
I can really grow as an artist.
We're a very divided city,
though we seem multicultural
from the outside.
We've got pockets of Jamaica.
We've got pockets of Somalia.
I mean, you can't not notice
Clifton on the top of the hill
looking out at the rest.
Just after we voted to leave,
Brexit,
walking through the Bear Pit,
someone decided it was OK to make
monkey chants towards me.
If that moment can galvanise
a racist to open his mouth,
if Trump getting into office can
galvanise America, racist America
to come out of the woodwork,
some stuff that Boris is doing here,
if the bigots feel emboldened
to open their mouth,
this moment has to make us feel
big enough to open our mouths.
# Look, black is beautiful
Black is excellent
# Black is pain, black is joy
Black is evident
# It's working twice as hard
as the people
# You know you're better than cos
you need to do double what they do
# So you can level them
# Black is so much deeper
than just African-American
# Our heritage being severed
# You never got to experiment
with family trees
# Cos they teach you about
famine and greed
# They show you pictures
of your fam on their knees
# Tell us we used to be
barbaric... #
Stuff like this is quicker
to get people out,
but in between all the marches
and all that going on,
we need something that's concrete.
The city feels like it very much
responds to the energy
that's inside it.
It's a very charged place,
and I don't want the energy
that we have to just dissipate.
I don't want to have to have another
person lose their life
for this sort of response
to come again,
so let's take the energy that's
there now and do something with it.
As our first cutting our teeth
in activism,
we have been blocking the sale
of the Rastafari Cultural Centre
in St Pauls, a space that was gifted
for anti-racism work.
The council are now going to tell us
that, today in 2020,
there's no need for this space.
Can't let it happen.
If we stay passive to the things
that are happening in our community,
what hope for the world?
Welcome to today's meeting.
Full details of questions submitted
are on the council's website,
and will be displayed on the screen
as we work through them.
Under Covid restrictions,
the city council's monthly meetings
are being held remotely.
Green question one, Councillor
Lake, do you have a supplementary?
Yes, I do.
Since Marvin became mayor,
Councillor Cleo Lake has been
critical of a lack of support
for Bristol's black communities.
My question was directly
about investment and support
for our black-led institutions
that already exist,
and whether we can get some
commitment from the council
to ensure that decades
of under-resourcing is resolved.
So first of all, you specifically
named a number of organisations.
I can't bypass a process
to specifically say from the outset
that what we will do is get money
to those specific organisations.
That wouldn't be, you know,
a fair and a just thing to do.
Well, it's not easy to be
the overall leader of a city,
let's be honest about that.
I'm sure coming into office,
sections of Bristol would have
thought, "Well, he's just going to
"do X, Y and Z for these people,
because he's from there,"
or this, that, and the other,
which hasn't happened.
Whilst he may, and as an
administration, come up with schemes
like the One City office
and Stepping Up,
which are award-winning programmes
or whatever,
they're all very well,
but they're not radical,
and they're not revolutionary.
We haven't got a revolutionary
mayor, is the bottom line.
Do you think you get given a harder
time from the black community
because you're black?
Not everyone. Not everyone.
Sometimes people can understand
who they are in the fight,
but the moment someone says,
"Well, come sit at the table with me
"and let's come up with a solution,"
they don't know about
making solutions.
What they know about is shouting
analysis and criticisms.
I think it comes also from sometimes
quite a weak understanding
of what politics is.
When you get elected, you don't get
a blank piece of paper
and you just write out your
wishlist and get it all.
It's a very challenging world.
The purpose of being elected
is not just to get a seat
by which you can come and ask me
to do stuff that you could
actually do yourself.
But as I said, come and see me
in between meetings.
Please, you know, the theatre of
a full council meeting...
I came to your office
two weeks ago, Marvin.
I've been ignored.
Go and have a look at
all the meetings we had booked.
What would you have done
differently?
I would have, if I had the
opportunity and the power
to make certain decisions, then
I would have apologised as a city
for our role historically,
and commit to reparations
in whatever way that came through,
and I would have removed the statue.
What do you make of Marvin's defence
of he would just be seen
as the black mayor who kind of
came in and took that down?
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with being the black
mayor who came and took that down?
The day after the statue
was pulled down,
the police launched
a criminal investigation.
Three weeks later, one group
of anti-racism campaigners
gathers outside City Hall
to protest.
So the tearing down of the statue
was not a criminal act.
It was an expression of anger,
not only with the killing
of George Floyd,
but also at the complacency of
Bristol's leading representatives
over three centuries to the crimes
that have been committed
against black people.
The city council
and business community
should now make a public apology
for the role the city has played
in the slave trade.
APPLAUSE
So you've got 50 white people
calling on the black mayor
to apologise for slavery.
It's a fascinating situation.
If I was to step up and apologise,
what would that mean?
Am I to stand in front of a group
of kind of
white progressive activists
apologising for slavery?
It's all just a little bit
more complicated than that, I think.
Marvin Rees,
what his administration has done
is give a statement of evidence
to Avon And Somerset Police.
Those young people that took that
political act are now at risk
of being arrested.
The prosecution of people
who were involved in
bringing the statue down is a really
tricky one for the council.
It's such a sensitive
and emotional subject,
and everyone has
a different opinion,
that you're never going to really
win whichever way it goes.
The police are in a tough spot,
because the whole world saw
that technically a crime
was committed.
For us, we were asked
whether we could give a statement,
which was really a fact-based
evidential statement,
literally that the statue
was there in the morning,
and then at the end of the day,
it was in the harbour,
and we hadn't given permission
for that to happen.
Given the kind of toxic history
of Colston in the city,
could you have chosen not
to have made the report and...?
No, it's criminal damage.
You've got to put the report in.
Politicians don't get to choose
when the criminal justice system
is and is not enacted.
That's very dangerous.
The police do not get to choose
when and not to investigate.
Ultimately, what happens is up to
the Crown Prosecution Service
and the judge.
NEWSREEL: Just before five o'clock
this morning, the empty plinth
which used to carry the statue
of the slave trader Edward Colston
in Bristol was replaced
with a sculpture of
one of the protesters
whose anger brought him down.
I think it's a really good statue,
to be honest,
in comparison to what was there.
It's very nice that someone
from London has come down
and put that there.
Yeah, we love it. I mean, it's so
exciting to wake up to the news
that Marc Quinn had installed it,
so we had to rush down,
you know, before it gets taken down.
But hopefully it won't.
Yeah, hopefully it won't,
but we don't know, do we?
It does a whole lot more to
represent, you know,
where Bristol stands
on the Black Lives Matter issue.
BIKE ENGINES REV
There's the bikers.
They're doing that all over,
whenever anything to do with
Black Lives Matter is going on,
the bikers are driving around
revving their engines.
RADIO: Frank in Hotwells,
your thoughts on this new statue
going up?
It's a farce.
It's an absolute farce.
Now, what if another section
of the same society turn up
and rip this one down
and throw that in the docks?
You have one new message.
This is a complaint
about the statue,
which is a symbol of Black Power
in the United States
that has no place in Bristol.
I've just got off the phone to Alex.
He's telling me
they're anticipating a backlash.
That backlash may not just be
symbolic on statues,
it could be in the lives of
real brown people in the city.
We have to act
before there is another action.
Yeah.
Black lives matter!
All lives matter, my love!
All lives.
A democracy is you vote
to take down the statue.
You don't rip it down...
So I had an email saying it's going
to be on Channel 4 News tonight,
so they're obviously there
to film it.
I had a call
from BBC Radio Bristol,
who think we're in on it.
We need to be clear we're not.
I know, I have been clear
that we're not,
but it looks like we've given them
permission and we've been
part of this, like, secrecy.
"I am compelled to write to you
to encourage the immediate
"and quiet removal of the
undemocratic and divisive statue
"of Jen Reid."
"I hereby object
to the BLM statue
"that has been ILLEGALLY
mounted in Bristol.
"I find this offensive
and unlawful."
"Time for Marvin
to get off the fence
"and get his act together
and do his job."
"This is a really beautiful symbol
"of what the toppling of
the Colston statue represents."
"Take it down
before it gets ripped down."
"I think you'd better take it down
before the white statue protectors
"come down - then you will have
a full-scale riot."
"Sod the decking statue.
"What are you doing
to save mass redundancies?"
The police, their intel is it
will probably be attacked tonight.
Because it's made of resin... Yeah.
..it's dead easy to smash up,
so there's a council team
ready to remove it.
So I guess our decision
is based on this timeline
of it being attacked.
So play it out, right?
What if it does get smashed?
Yeah.
We've been warning from the start,
we've been very clear,
we want the space, we've been very
clear about opportunists
jumping into the situation to try
and make their name
and tell their story, right?
Yeah.
Sometimes you need you need to allow
people to feel a bit of the pain.
If it gets smashed, isn't that
just another bit of PR for him?
So I've just had a phone call
from someone who says if the mayor
doesn't take it down, him and 20
of his mates from the south
of England are going to come
up to Bristol
and they're going to
take it down themselves.
ARGUING
That was not...
We've not voted for...
It doesn't need to be voted for.
Occasionally,
people power takes over,
and that is a symbol against racism.
Do you think things have ever
got better in the world
without someone breaking the law?
And you, by arguing against it,
are in fact...
Say it, go on.
..pushing forward that type of
culture.
If you speak out,
you're labelled as a racist.
No-one here labelled you racist.
My concern is there's a huge
voice in the city who think
it's absolutely wonderful.
Yeah, right, probably mostly
a middle-class white audience
are like, "Oh, it's brilliant.
Isn't it great? Isn't it artistic?"
And then it gets smashed,
and then it's more vitriol
aimed at the people
that have done it,
and it's still not bringing
these groups together.
I don't know.
Sometimes people need an opportunity
to see where things could go.
The question is,
it's quite a decent statue,
it's a decent sculpture
of a black woman.
Therefore, the image of that being
smashed is strong. Yeah.
What if people decide they want
to put a rope around it,
pull it down
and drag it into the harbour?
I just think that would be horrific.
I'm just worried as well about
the woman it's of. She's local.
She's now going to be on the news,
and I just worry that she perhaps
hasn't fully understood
the implications that could
come back to her and her family.
There ain't no clean decisions
here.
My sense is relax about it,
as much as we can relax.
You made a statement,
we'll give you the, you know,
you can have the plinth for the day,
you know, you've had your time,
and you've had your bit
on Channel 4, and then, you know,
and then we take it tomorrow
and we'll say,
"OK, so we'll look after it,
but by the way, Marc,
"this is the cost
in terms of our staff time,
"how much it cost
in terms of police time."
We'll send him the bill for that,
because if we pay for it,
it comes out of our budget.
But he needs to know you can't
run around doing what you want
without accounting
for the consequences,
be it the social consequences
or the financial consequences.
And I find that frustrating.
So let's do that.
Andy, how are you doing? You a fan
of the London arts world, are you?
My sense is that we leave it
till tomorrow.
All right, Andy, cheers, take care,
bye.
I think an empty plinth is one
of the most powerful statements
we have at this moment in time
in the city, because it represents
a city that's taking time to stop
and think about its future.
The best way forward for the city
would be to
begin to come to terms
with its full history,
and within that context, be able
to have a more informed view
on who it wants to honour,
if anyone.
This circumvents that process.
Now, I recognise
that it's an incredible statue.
I recognise that.
But as a political leader,
you don't have the luxury
of just stopping at
the first bus stop of meaning.
When you see an event happen,
you have to think,
"OK, how is this going to be
interpreted by other people,
"and what are
the unintended consequences?"
We just got back from holiday,
escaping Bristol
for a couple of weeks,
which was fantastic.
Within an hour, get the police
knocking on the door.
The police have warned Marvin
and his wife Kirsten
that there are direct threats
being made to their family.
They've had anti-terrorist
intelligence,
like, those three words together,
it's like, "What?"
They say it's low-level,
but we want you aware,
and you're thinking, "OK, yes,"
but your head's spinning,
because you're thinking of all
the what-ifs, you know, Jo Cox,
stories you hear of acid
just being thrown in people's faces.
People know where we live.
They know our address,
because it was on the ballot,
which is infuriating as well.
I showed you some moves.
You did show me some moves!
We have weapons
in various parts of our house.
If I come downstairs,
I'm not coming downstairs to lose.
I'm coming downstairs to win.
We had a threat about five weeks
ago, so we were already
in conversation with upping security
a bit more from the last,
so each threat, it becomes
a little bit more secure.
With the kids,
they saw the first threat,
because it was blatantly
written out,
"Marvin must die," on our sidewalk.
So when I woke up that morning,
opened up my daughter's curtains,
who's on the front of the house,
I saw it in big white painting.
Marvin was in the shower.
I was furious,
"Have you seen?!",
and then I wanted to just
swear my head off on Facebook.
I was like, "Don't do it."
So, yeah.
Our neighbour said
if he'd seen it first,
he would have put a T on the end,
so it would have said,
"Marvin must diet."
But he obviously didn't see it.
What is amazing is numerous
neighbours said, any issue,
you know, we've got your back.
You said that I need to
take these...
..take these, what, these threats
more seriously?
I do take them seriously,
but I don't show it,
and I don't feel physically
threatened on a day-to-day basis.
When I get angry,
and that is the word,
is thinking about my family,
Kirsten and the children,
people kind of invading that space.
But that I think is a white-black
thing, too, that Marvin's...
He has resilience, because it's not
new to him to be threatened.
For me, it is.
Do you ever think,
"I wish he didn't do this"?
No.
Well, probably...
..if I'm honest, yeah.
Like, being away by the sea,
I grew up by the sea,
so yeah, I want to escape,
run away.
But also, you've got to
do something in life,
not just swim every day in the sea.
The threats to Marvin are part
of a rise in racist incidents
reported in the city
over the summer.
Sari has seen a backlash to both
the toppling of the statue,
but also when Jen Reid's statue
went up.
Today, I've had about
four referrals.
Eggs thrown at the house
was one of them,
cars being attacked and damaged,
windows being put through.
We had a mum who'd just moved from
one area from racial harassment,
had moved to another area,
and the son had been threatened
with being stabbed,
and then she'd had an air gun
shot through the window
over her and her baby's head
in the sitting room.
One referral came in today
where a child was in the park,
and they were attacked by the mother
of some other children in that park,
and they were throttled and told
that, "I'm going to send you back
"to the cotton fields, and I'm going
to burn your family's house down,"
and you can see the language there
is linked to slavery.
While Marvin was on holiday, one
racist attack left a young black man
with life-threatening injuries.
A hospital worker
has been left scarred
and frightened for his safety
after being seriously injured
in a racially-aggravated
hit and run.
The 21-year-old was walking
to the bus stop after finishing work
at Southmead Hospital in Bristol.
Witnesses say a car
was driven at him deliberately
before two men shouted racial abuse.
We're going up to meet the young man
who was attacked -
I mean, you could call it
an attempted lynching -
by some people driving a car
into him.
He's out of hospital now,
and he's back home.
These moments of crisis come,
famously, it's said, crisis comes
with both threats and opportunities,
and the threat is,
if we can't hold it together,
that...
..the incidents will feed on each
other and then they would escalate,
and our society would disintegrate.
The opportunity is it pulls the lid
back, as it were, on our workings,
and we discover all these
weaknesses, these animosities,
hatreds, inequalities in our
society, and we get an opportunity
to decide whether we're going to
confront them or not.
How is your recovery?
Well, it's going good at the moment.
Yeah, just keep getting better
and better. I'm quite an active guy,
like playing football,
doing loads of stuff, like going
into the studio, I do music as well.
So just the fact
that I can't do all of that,
I've just being stopped,
and I'm just in the house,
just, it gets to you mentally,
in a way,
because you just start thinking
of it over and over again. Yeah.
His first thought was for his mother
when he was lying on the ground.
He couldn't actually contact her
because the phone
didn't recognise him.
His facial recognition on the phone
didn't work. That stupid thing,
face recognition.
And the second thought
was for everybody else.
In Bristol. To warn them. Yeah.
We're lucky he's recovering,
but the motive of those people,
what they wanted to do to our son
and everything, is so horrific.
I don't feel safe for my family,
or for anyone out there
as well, of the black community,
and I don't want any other family
to go through this.
If they can do it in broad daylight,
so who is safe now in this city?
Yeah.
Football is probably one thing
I'm going to miss, to be fair,
because I don't even know
if I can head a football
with all these injuries right now.
What's your team in Bristol?
Bristol City. Bristol City?
Yeah. What about you?
Both of them.
LAUGHTER
That's the best way to play it,
cos you can't be on one side.
I've got a list of things here
just about trying to make sure
you're getting what you need,
physiotherapy and all that.
The emotional support
is important to you.
And then we'll talk about
how do we keep it high profile
with the police.
And then as much as it means
anything, you know,
you're not alone.
Like I mean, you were the one
who went through the incident,
but it's not invisible.
Yeah. You know, and there are
a lot of people who really care.
After this stuff happened,
I recorded a song to just like...
You feel kind of better
when you make a song or something,
and plus it's spreading awareness
and so on as well.
# First things first
I'm happy to be alive
# I wanna thank G-O-D
# And everyone that helped
my family
# They've really been through
a L-O-# I can never understand a racist
# Why do they hate so B-A-D?
# We've been oppressed
for a long time
# When I think about it, it's S-A-D
# How can you try and kill a man
for the colour of his skin?
# Man, that's outrageous
# Driving a car into an innocent guy
for no reason, that's so brainless
# When these... #
Politics is so much,
such a kind of a crap game.
You know, you try and do your best
and all that,
and you've just got this swirl
around you of conspiracy,
subterfuge, attacks, hitbacks,
and all this nonsense
that goes on.
And every now and again,
you get an opportunity to ground it.
# Soon I'll be just fine, like
Soon I'll be just fine. #
The pain and agony
his mum must experience
must be terrifying for her.
And I hate to think what must happen
when she lies down at night
and she thinks about her children
getting through tomorrow.
In response to the threats
to Marvin,
security is increased
for the mayor's office.
OK, good morning.
My name is Paul Lacey,
I'm from Avon And Somerset Police.
I'm here today to give you
a presentation
on corrosive substance attacks.
There are some quite graphic images,
but it is quite important
you understand the effects of
what acids and alkalines
can do to a human being.
Black Lives Matter!
Black Lives Matter!
Over the following months,
Black Lives Matter protests
continue to be held peacefully
in the city.
..your buildings.
We are the architects of our future.
APPLAUSE
Some of the city's institutions
renounced their association
with Colston.
Colston Hall
is renamed Bristol Beacon,
and Colston's Girls' School
becomes Montpelier High School.
We've got a city
that's gone through a huge event,
you know, very challenging,
and we've held ourselves together,
and I'm really proud of the way
we've held ourselves together.
That doesn't mean it's easy,
doesn't mean there aren't tensions,
and we've got these fractures,
but Bristol's still together.
SHOUTING, WHISTLING
But nine months after the statue
was toppled,
a demonstration
dubbed Kill The Bill
by opponents of a new law
restricting public protests
targets a police station a few
hundred yards from Colston's plinth.
SHOUTING
Bad day, bad hangover this morning,
Marvin, I'm thinking for the city.
Absolutely.
It's a shameful day after a year
of great pride in Bristol.
"You allowed BLM slash Marxists
to take down the statue of Colston,
"you have allowed the dregs of
the Labour membership to protest,
"defecate in the street,
and attack the police.
"Shame on you, Mr Mayor."
One of the Conservative councillors
wrote an email
to all the councillors saying I
should be hanging my head in shame
because my involvement with
Black Lives Matter et al,
as he referred to it, I guess, is
the cause of what's happened today.
I absolutely condemn the violence
we saw in Bristol last night.
It was a display of selfish,
self-indulgent,
self-centred violence.
This last year has been
an incredible source of pride,
actually. It's been amazing
to be able to talk about
how we as a city have navigated
incredibly tense situations
and had tense conversations,
had the potential for conflict,
and actually move through it.
Those people who came and brought
violence to Bristol last night
tried to steal that from us,
and it's not welcome.
I mean, it's a challenging moment.
How we've overcome this year,
this year of loss for so many,
that's what we should be talking
about, how we stand together,
and build our future together.
Thank you, Bristol.
Cities are complicated.
The people are afraid of tension,
but tension in and of itself
isn't necessarily bad.
And we've got some choices
as a city.
We can ignore it and ultimately
try and stuff it back in the box,
we can allow those tensions
to be hijacked by ignorance
or opportunistic leaders
who want to appeal to a base
and get some cheap power,
or we can engage with that tension
and see it as an opportunity
to learn, and come out stronger
at the other end.
And this really goes
to the heart of me.
I've got a fundamental contradiction
in my existence,
being a mixed-race man
from a working-class background.
Racism is real.
It is real and raw.
There is such a thing
called white privilege,
and I'm on the wrong side
of that white privilege,
because I'm not white.
But my white mum did not lead
a life of privilege.
And I hope that as a city,
we can be a place that shows
a mature approach to grapple
with those complexities
and keep itself together.